Twelve is a Difficult Age

[mightymorbid]

Who: Mozenrath, Severus Snape, Martha Jones
Where: Snape's cabin
When: During the age reversal flood, after this
Warnings: General angst, preteen woes and needyness. (Also initial part of the opening post is a retread of the closing comment in the last thread)

Mozenrath stared after Hoffman as he was left collapsed on the floor, white as a sheet,

Comments

[thegooddrjones]

The potion was working, and Martha was completely marveled by it. It was funny really the way that Martha could be a complete nerd in almost every way possible. While Severus was giving the potion to Remus, she made her way to the door with quite a grin. However, the grin started to slip off her face when the door opened and she saw Mozenrath standing there looking like that.

Worry and concern filled her face, and she took a step back so that he could step inside. She looked to him, taking note of the way his eyes were red, the growing egg on his forehead and just the way he looked.

"Oh love," her voice was soft, and her fingers lightly rested on his arm once they were inside. "What happened?"

[mightymorbid]

If she hadn't said it that way, he would have been fine. There was a reason it was such a low blow for someone to imitate those tones when they were doing harm to someone; it toyed with more animal instincts (even if they knew it was a lie) and belied safety when there was none, all because of the way it sounded. Hearing it fully genuine (whether he would have cared to acknowledge that or not), struck the wrong chord in him, and he felt himself sniffling in spite of himself. He started to answer once, twice...stopped each time when he felt his voice getting away from him and pushed at his eyes with the heels of his hands, angry at himself. He finally gave up trying to answer -- he didn't want to; this was embarrassing enough as it is -- and shook his head.

[thegooddrjones]

When he pushed at his eyes with the heels of his hands and shook his head, Martha quickly moved over and wrapped her arms around him in a hug. If he hadn't looked so miserable, if he hadn't been twelve, if they hadn't been alone, she probably wouldn't have done it, but frankly he looked like he needed it. "Do you want to tell me what happened?"

[mightymorbid]

When she hugged him, he made a sound. It was probably intended to be a "no", but really it just came out as a small indiscernible noise, and his face scrunched up a little to hold all else in. He shook his head again.